US rebuffs Blair’s Mideast peace bid
( This is the only other reference I can find today.This must have just came out today I guess. Note the bold )
By Nazir Majally, Arab News Staff
CAIRO/GAZA CITY, 6 October — Israeli soldiers shot dead a 17-year-old Palestinian during clashes with stone-throwing protesters in the West Bank city of Nablus yesterday, Palestinian witnesses and medics said, on the eve of an international round of peace diplomacy. The Israeli Army said its troops fired “deterrence shots not aimed at people” after Palestinians threw rocks.
As the death toll in the two-year-old Palestinian uprising approached 2,500, The Guardian newspaper in London reported that Prime Minister Tony Blair’s drive for Middle East peace talks has been rebuffed by US President George W. Bush, only days after he flagged the plan, amid gathering clouds of war over Iraq. Blair pressed on Tuesday for a resumption of Israeli-Palestinian talks, coupled with an international conference by January.
According to The Guardian, Bush blocked the initiative and made it clear to Blair that he does not want such talks to be held in the near future. Meanwhile, Israel’s Army chief of staff was quoted as saying the “terror infrastructure” in the West Bank had been hit hard, but that further work was needed in the Gaza Strip.
The incident in Nablus, which has been under curfew for more than 100 days, inflamed tensions ahead of the arrival of EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana last night for shuttle talks with Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
Palestinian political sources said Solana would bear a letter from the “quartet” of international mediators — the United Nations, the United States, Russia and the European Union — aimed at breaking the current stalemate.
Solana will meet with Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres today, and a meeting with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat tomorrow.
US Middle East envoy William Burns is expected to visit in coming days and a source close to the Israeli government said Bush had invited the hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to Washington for a meeting on Oct. 15. Political sources said Sharon’s talks with Bush would address both the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Iraq.
The youth killed in Nablus, Ammar Rajab, was the second Palestinian teenager to be killed in the West Bank in as many days. Nablus residents said soldiers, who had often allowed children to attend unofficial classes at nearby schools despite the curfew, yesterday ordered them back home, prompting protesters to begin throwing stones.
[ We'll that settles it.They needed a Kill'in ]
Israel has reoccupied West Bank cities since a spate of Palestinian bombings and has imposed military curfews, saying they help prevent further attacks. Palestinians and human rights organizations say the measures are collective punishment.
Meanwhile, Arafat said in remarks published yesterday he favored reforms to his Palestinian Authority even if they undermined him personally. “If the reforms undermined me, then (I would still) welcome them. I don’t make reforms for my own sake but for the sake of the sacred (Palestinian) cause,” Arafat told the pan-Arab Al-Hayat newspaper in an interview. In the interview with the London-based newspaper, Arafat said: “It was I who decided on the reforms, and if those reforms lead to a reduction in my prerogatives, I am in favor.”
Arafat on Tuesday received the backing of his influential Fatah faction for a three-week delay in appointing an interim Cabinet and support for his opposition to the idea of naming a prime minister to assume some of his powers.
Arafat, whose 21-member Cabinet quit in September to avoid a showdown with lawmakers when it appeared he would lose a vote of confidence in the reform-minded Palestinian Legislative Council, was to have appointed new ministers by the end of last month. Arafat has scheduled presidential and parliamentary elections for Jan. 20. |
